Favors.dev
The short answer
To post on Product Hunt you need a personal account that has finished onboarding, a direct product URL, a name, a tagline of up to 60 characters, a description, a square thumbnail, at least two gallery images and a pricing tag. To be featured on the homepage you need more: a live product that the Product Hunt team judges useful, novel, well crafted or creative. Posting is a form. Featuring is a review. This checklist is accurate as of October 1, 2026.
Founders get blindsided by the gap between those two bars. They fill in every field, press the button, and watch a launch page appear. Then it never reaches the homepage, and they assume the algorithm hates them. Usually the form was fine. The product was in a category that is never featured, or nobody could use it yet.
Below are both bars, every field in the listing with a good and a weak version, and a checklist you can run the night before. I read each requirement on Product Hunt's own pages in a real browser on the day this was published, because third-party guides repeat numbers that are out of date, and I have noted where Product Hunt's own pages disagree with each other.
Posting vs being featured: what are the two different bars?
Posting is mechanical: if you meet the account and form rules, your launch page exists. Featuring is editorial: the Product Hunt team reviews the submission and decides whether it goes on the default homepage view, which shows featured products first. You can toggle the homepage to "All" to see everything, featured or not.
| The bar to post | The bar to be featured | |
|---|---|---|
| Who decides | You do. Fill the form, press the button. | The Product Hunt team, after reviewing your submission. |
| What it needs | A personal account, finished onboarding, and the required fields. | A live product that scores on useful, novel, high craft or creative. |
| What blocks it | Company account, missing required field, shortened or tracking URL. | A product type on the not-featured list, or a product people cannot use yet. |
| What you get | A launch page that exists and can be shared. | A place on the default homepage view, which shows featured products first. |
What do you need before you can post anything?
A personal account, and a finished onboarding. Product Hunt's help article on posting a product says company accounts cannot hunt or post products, and that newly created accounts must complete onboarding before they get access to post. Do that days ahead, not on launch morning.
- No company or brand accounts. Product Hunt is built around people, and the same rule applies to commenting. Post as yourself.
- You do not need a hunter. Product Hunt says it sees no discernible advantage to a third-party hunter and encourages makers to submit their own product, which also gives you full control of the page.
- If someone already posted your product, you can launch again later when you are ready, or ask Product Hunt for help. Do not sit on it hoping it fixes itself.
- Posting twice in under six months triggers the relaunch rules. I cover them in how to relaunch on Product Hunt.
What are all the Product Hunt listing fields, good vs weak?
Product Hunt autosaves your work as a draft, so you do not need everything at once, but you do need to know what is coming. Here is every field in the order you meet it. The examples use a made-up bookkeeping app called Tidybook. Each field is labeled required, recommended or optional, based on how Product Hunt describes it.
01URLRequired
A direct link to the page where the product can be used or downloaded. Shortened links and tracking links such as UTM URLs are not accepted, and press or blog links are the wrong target.
Good: https://tidybook.app, the landing page with a sign-up button.
Weak: A bit.ly link, a URL ending in ?utm_source=producthunt, or a link to your launch blog post.
02NameRequired
Only the product's name. No description and no emoji unless they are genuinely part of the name.
Good: Tidybook
Weak: Tidybook 🚀 The best bookkeeping app
03TaglineRequired
Maximum 60 characters. Plain language, no gimmicks. It is the line that decides whether anyone clicks through from the homepage.
Good: Bookkeeping for freelancers who hate spreadsheets (49 characters, says what and for whom).
Weak: The #1 AI-powered finance platform for everyone (vague, over the top, no audience).
04DescriptionRequired
A short explanation of the value and the main features. The limit depends on which Product Hunt page you read: the Launch Guide says 500 characters and the Help Center says 260. Write to 260 and you satisfy both.
Good: Tidybook turns bank transactions into invoices and tax-ready reports. Connect a bank, tag a few payments, and it learns your categories.
Weak: A 500-character feature dump, or a one-line placeholder like "Tidybook is a platform."
05Topics (launch tags)Recommended
Up to three, strongly related to the product. Product Hunt suggests including a few so the launch shows up on tag pages.
Good: Three tight tags that describe the category and the buyer.
Weak: No tags at all, or the loosest tags that fit anything.
06ThumbnailRequired
A square image, 240x240 recommended, under 3MB. A GIF only animates on hover, so the first frame has to work as a still.
Good: The logo mark on a solid background, readable at a glance.
Weak: A wide screenshot squashed into a square, or a GIF whose first frame is blank.
07GalleryRequired
At least two images before the gallery displays on the post page. 1270x760 is the recommended size, and you can drag images into order.
Good: Image one shows the product doing its one job. Later images show the second and third thing.
Weak: Exactly two images, one of them a logo on a gradient.
08VideoOptional
YouTube links only, the full URL (shortened links will not load), and not set to private.
Good: A 60 to 90 second screen recording with the first five seconds showing the result.
Weak: A link to a video still set to private, so it never appears in the gallery.
09Interactive demoOptional
A click-through demo built with a tool such as Arcade, Storylane or Supademo and added like a video link.
Good: A six-step walkthrough of the first-run experience.
Weak: A demo that opens on a login wall.
10Makers and shoutoutsRecommended
Add co-makers by Product Hunt username, so they need accounts well before launch day. You get three shoutouts for the tools that helped you build.
Good: Co-makers already have accounts and can answer comments on launch day.
Weak: A co-maker added the night before who never gets credited or joins the thread.
11PricingRequired
Three options: free, paid, or paid with a free trial or plan. Pick the one that matches reality.
Good: "Paid with a free trial" when there is a trial and a paywall after it.
Weak: "Free" because the sign-up is free, when the product charges after a week.
12PromoOptional
If you add one, all three inputs are required: the offer, the code and the expiration date.
Good: A real, time-limited offer with a working code.
Weak: A code that expired the day before launch.
13First commentRecommended
You can write it during submission. It sits right below the gallery. Product Hunt reports that 70% of products that reached Product of the Day, Week or Month had a first comment from the maker.
Good: Who it is for, why you built it, what you want feedback on, and one honest limitation.
Weak: Blank, or a pasted tagline with a request for upvotes.
14Schedule or launch nowRequired
You can schedule up to one month ahead, or save a draft. Product Hunt's day runs on Pacific time, so a launch scheduled for 12:01 AM PT gets the full cycle.
Good: Scheduled a week out so you can collect followers before the day.
Weak: Clicked "launch now" at 4 PM Pacific and got eight hours of leaderboard.
Two notes on the fields founders skip. The first comment is the one that costs the most: it appears directly under the gallery and Product Hunt reports that 70% of products reaching Product of the Day, Week or Month had one from the maker. And leaving topics empty means your launch does not appear on the tag pages that Product Hunt says it builds from them. Both take minutes. Neither can be done well in the last one.
What are the image and video requirements?
Two images are the hard minimum, and everything else is a recommendation. The thumbnail is required and should be square, with 240x240 recommended and a 3MB ceiling. The gallery needs two or more images before it displays, at a recommended 1270x760. Video is optional and YouTube only, using the full URL on a public video.
Product Hunt's own launch preparation guide adds context worth knowing. About 53% of products that reached Product of the Day since 2021 included a video, but it also says a video is not always necessary, and that less than a third of Product of the Day winners used an animated GIF as the thumbnail. Treat those as descriptions of what winners did, not as rules. A sharp still and two honest screenshots beat a rushed video.
One discrepancy to plan around: the Launch Guide lists a 500 character description while the Help Center says 260. I have no way to know which page is stale, so I write to the smaller number. Short descriptions read better on the homepage anyway.
What do the featuring criteria actually reward?
Product Hunt's featuring guidelines, last updated March 10, 2026, name four things it looks for: useful, novel, high craft and creative. A featured launch does not have to score high on all four, and often spikes on one or two. Product Hunt also says it features digital products that are currently available, avoids undifferentiated products that look primarily focused on quick monetization, and that engagement is not the only factor.
More useful for planning is what it will not feature. Check this list against your product before you spend a week on the gallery:
- Waitlisted products without immediate access
- Directories and lists
- Templates and boilerplates
- Podcasts, courses, reports and books
- Events
- Services
- Commerce stores and deal sites
- Off-topic submissions
- Kickstarter projects that are not fully functional
- Hardware without a prominent digital component
Product Hunt says its team reviews each submission and that featuring decisions are, in the vast majority of cases, final. It also asks that you only reach out if you have critical information that was not in your original submission. That is why the form deserves care: it is the whole case you get to make. If you are weighing venues, the launch directories guide compares where else a product like yours can go, and Product Hunt alternatives covers the rest.
What should you check before you press submit?
Run this the night before, with the draft open. If you can answer yes to every line, the form is done. What happens afterward is a different job, covered in the step-by-step Product Hunt launch guide and the SaaS launch day checklist.
- Posting from a personal account that finished onboarding, not a company or brand account.
- The URL is a direct, untracked link to a page where someone can actually use the product.
- The product is live, or has immediate access, and is not on the not-featured list.
- Name has no description or emoji. Tagline is 60 characters or fewer and says what and for whom.
- Description fits 260 characters.
- Thumbnail is square, under 3MB, and readable as a still frame.
- At least two gallery images at roughly 1270x760, with the strongest one first.
- Any video is a full YouTube URL and is public.
- Co-makers have accounts and are added by username.
- Pricing tag matches what a visitor will find on your site.
- Any promo has an offer, a code and a future expiration date.
- First comment is written, and it asks for feedback, not upvotes.
- The launch is scheduled, and the link you will share is ready.
A form that passes this list still needs people. Product Hunt does not allow you to ask directly for upvotes, so the honest way to fill a launch day is to ask real people to try the product and say what they think. That is what the Favors.dev launch calendar is for: founders on the founder marketing co-op earn points from the points economy by trying a product and leaving a verified, honest comment. You can also get your listing in order on your Favors.dev app page first, since it asks for much of the same material: name, tagline, description and screenshots.
Frequently asked questions
What are the requirements to post on Product Hunt?
You need a personal account that has completed onboarding, since company accounts cannot post. The submission needs a direct product URL, a name, a tagline of up to 60 characters, a description, a square thumbnail, at least two gallery images, a pricing tag and a launch date or draft. Everything else, including video, promo and the first comment, is optional or recommended. These details are as of October 1, 2026.
What is the Product Hunt tagline character limit?
60 characters. Product Hunt asks for a very short description with no gimmicks or over-the-top language, because the tagline is the main thing that makes someone click through from the homepage.
What size should Product Hunt images be?
Square thumbnails at 240x240 and gallery images at 1270x760 are the recommended sizes, with every image kept under 3MB. Product Hunt calls these recommendations rather than hard limits, but matching them avoids awkward cropping. A GIF thumbnail only animates on hover.
How many gallery images do you need on Product Hunt?
Two. The gallery will not be viewable on the post page until it has at least two images. Product Hunt notes that some technical products only need a couple, while others need many.
Does Product Hunt feature every product that is posted?
No. Posting and featuring are separate. Anyone with a personal account can post, but the Product Hunt team reviews each submission and features only live products that score on being useful, novel, well crafted or creative. Categories such as directories, templates, courses and waitlisted products are not featured, and the default homepage shows featured products first.